Voodoo in New Orleans


Robert Tallant - 1946
    From its first known appearances in New Orleans of 200 years ago, here are the fetishes and formulae, the rites and dances, the cures, charms and gris-gris. Here were the witch-doctors and queens, and in particular Doctor John, who acquired fame and fortune, and Marie Laveau, who with her daughter dominated the weird underworld of voodoo for nearly a century." Kirkus Reviews "Robert Tallant speaks with authority . . . ." New York Times "Much nonsense has been written about voodoo in New Orleans. . .here is a truthful and definitive picture." Lyle Saxton Both of Robert Tallant's highly praised books about the practice of voodoo in New Orleans have been re-issued in paperback. Originally published in 1946, Voodoo in New Orleans examines the origins of the cult voodooism. The lives of New Orleans's most infamous witch doctors and voodoo queens have been re-created in this well-researched account of New Orleans's dark underworld.

The Jewish Study Bible: Featuring the Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation


Adele Berlin - 2003
    Nearly forty scholars worldwide contributed to the translation and interpretation of the Jewish Study Bible, representing the best of Jewish biblical scholarship available today. A committee of highly-respected biblical scholars and rabbis from the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism movements produced this modern translation.No knowledge of Hebrew is required for one to make use of this unique volume. The Jewish Study Bible uses The Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation.Since its publication, the Jewish Study Bible has become one of the most popular volumes in Oxford's celebrated line of bibles. The quality of scholarship, easy-to-navigate format, and vibrant supplementary features bring the ancient text to life.* Informative essays that address a wide variety of topics relating to Judaism's use and interpretation of the Bible through the ages. * In-text tables, maps, and charts. * Tables of weights and measures. * Verse and chapter differences. * Table of Scriptural Readings. * Glossary of technical terms. * An index to all the study materials. * Full color New Oxford Bible Maps, with index.

Charms, Spells, and Formulas: For the Making and Use of Gris Gris Bags, Herb Candles, Doll Magic, Incenses, Oils, and Powders


Ray T. Malbrough - 1986
    You are given detailed instructions for making and using the gris-gris(charm) bags only casually or mysteriously mentioned by other writers. Malbrough not only shows how to make gris-gris bags for health, money, luck, love and protection from evil and harm, but he also explains how these charms work. He also takes you into the world of doll magick to gain love, success, or prosperity.

The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft


Rebecca L. Stein - 2007
    It is aimed at students encountering anthropology for the first time. Reviewers describe the text as vivid, rich, user-friendly, accessible, and well-organized. The text examines religious expression from a cross-cultural perspective while incorporating key theoretical concepts. In addition to providing a basic overview of anthropology, including definition of key terms and exposure to ethnographies, the text exposes students to the varying complexity of world religions.

The World's Wisdom: Sacred Texts of the World's Religions


Philip Novak - 1994
    Authentic, poetic translations of key texts are coupled with insightful introductions and "grace notes."

The Druid Way


Philip Carr-Gomm - 1993
    Druids and Druidesses were magicians and poets, counsellors and healers, shamans and philosophers.

The Analects


Confucius
    Together they express a philosophy, or a moral code, by which Confucius, one of the most humane thinkers of all time, believed everyone should live. Upholding the ideals of wisdom, self-knowledge, courage and love of one’s fellow man, he argued that the pursuit of virtue should be every individual’s supreme goal. And, while following the Way, or the truth, might not result in immediate or material gain, Confucius showed that it could nevertheless bring its own powerful and lasting spiritual rewards.This edition contains a detailed introduction exploring the concepts of the original work, a bibliography and glossary and appendices on Confucius himself, The Analects and the disciples who compiled them. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Elementary Forms of Religious Life


Émile Durkheim - 1912
    He investigates what he considered to be the simplest form of documented religion - totemism among the Aborigines of Australia. For Durkheim, studying Aboriginal religion was a way 'to yield an understanding of the religious nature of man, by showing us an essential and permanent aspect of humanity'. The need and capacity of men and women to relate to one another socially lies at the heart of Durkheim's exploration, in which religion embodies the beliefs that shape our moral universe. The Elementary Forms has been applauded and debated by sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, philosophers, and theologians, and continues to speak to new generations about the intriguing origin and nature of religion and society. This new, lightly abridged edition provides an excellent introduction to Durkheim's ideas.

The Secret Tradition of the Soul


Patrick Harpur - 2010
    This hidden tradition, according to Harpur, places our soul at the center of the universe and emphasizes imagination, the collective unconscious, and an “otherworld” or afterlife; above all, it teaches us how to know ourselves and how to recover a sense of meaning largely lost today. Harpur shows how this tradition drives the literature of otherworld journeys, from the flights of shamans and the dreams of psychoanalysis to the mystic imagination of Romantic poets and the visions of those having near-death experiences. The Secret Tradition of the Soul is the first book to gather together all the threads of the soul tradition and weave them into a bigger, clearer picture, presenting a worldview at once ancient and revolutionary.About the Imprint: EVOLVER EDITIONS promotes a new counterculture that recognizes humanity's visionary potential and takes tangible, pragmatic steps to realize it. EVOLVER EDITIONS explores the dynamics of personal, collective, and global change from a wide range of perspectives. EVOLVER EDITIONS is an imprint of North Atlantic Books and is produced in collaboration with Evolver, LLC.

Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing


Robert Wolff - 2001
    Deep in the mountainous jungle of Malaysia the aboriginal Sng'oi exist on the edge of extinction, though their way of living may ultimately be the kind of existence that will allow us all to survive. The Sng'oi--pre-industrial, pre-agricultural, semi-nomadic--live without cars or cell phones, without clocks or schedules in a lush green place where worry and hurry, competition and suspicion are not known. Yet these indigenous people--as do many other aboriginal groups--possess an acute and uncanny sense of the energies, emotions, and intentions of their place and the living beings who populate it, and trustingly follow this intuition, using it to make decisions about their actions each day. Psychologist Robert Wolff lived with the Sng'oi, learned their language, shared their food, slept in their huts, and came to love and admire these people who respect silence, trust time to reveal and heal, and live entirely in the present with a sense of joy. Even more, he came to recognize the depth of our alienation from these basic qualities of life. Much more than a document of a disappearing people, Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing holds a mirror to our own existence, allowing us to see how far we have wandered from the ways of the intuitive and trusting Sng'oi, and challenges us, in our fragmented world, to rediscover this humanity within ourselves.

The Morrigan: Celtic Goddess of Magick and Might


Courtney Weber - 2019
    "She is warrior, queen, death omen, mother, murderer, lover, spy, conspirator, faery, shape-shifter, healer, and sometimes the living earth itself. A captivating contradiction: a demonic female who both haunts and heals; benevolent in one moment, ghastly the next, and kind the moment after that.”The Morrigan is one of Pagan Ireland’s most famous—and notorious—goddesses. Her name translated as “phantom queen” or “great queen,” the Morrigan is famous for being a goddess of war, witchcraft and death, protection and retribution. This book also explores her patronage of motherhood, healing, shapeshifting, and the land. Classified among the Sidhe (fairies), the Morrigan dates back at least to Ireland’s Iron Age, but she is as modern as she is ancient―enjoying a growing contemporary and global following.Author Courtney Weber provides a guide for the modern devotee of this complex, mysterious goddess that encompasses practical veneration with modern devotionals, entwined with traditional lore and Irish-Celtic history.

Confessions


Augustine of Hippo
    Written in the author's early forties in the last years of the fourth century A.D. and during his first years as a bishop, they reflect on his life and on the activity of remembering and interpreting a life. Books I-IV are concerned with infancy and learning to talk, schooldays, sexual desire and adolescent rebellion, intense friendships and intellectual exploration. Augustine evolves and analyses his past with all the resources of the reading which shaped his mind: Virgil and Cicero, Neoplatonism and the Bible. This volume, which aims to be usable by students who are new to Augustine, alerts readers to the verbal echoes and allusions of Augustine's brilliant and varied Latin, and explains his theological and philosophical questioning of what God is and what it is to be human. The edition is intended for use by students and scholars of Latin literature, theology and Church history.

Labor and Legality: An Ethnography of a Mexican Immigrant Network


Ruth Gomberg-Muoz - 2010
    Ruth Gomberg-Mu�oz introduces readers to the Lions, ten friends from Mexico committed to improving their fortunes and the lives of theirfamilies. Set in and around Il Vino, a restaurant that could stand in for many places that employ undocumented workers, Labor and Legality reveals the faces behind the war being waged over illegal aliens in America. Gomberg-Mu�oz focuses on how undocumented workers develop a wide range of socialstrategies to cultivate financial security, nurture emotional well-being, and promote their dignity and self-esteem. She also reviews the political and historical circumstances of undocumented migration, with an emphasis on post-1970 socioeconomic and political conditions in the United States andMexico.Labor and Legality is one of several volumes in the Issues of Globalization: Case Studies in Contemporary Anthropology series, which examines the experiences of individual communities in our contemporary world. Each volume offers a brief and engaging exploration of a particular issue arising fromglobalization and its cultural, political, and economic effects on certain peoples or groups. Ideal for introductory anthropology courses-and as supplements for a variety of upper-level courses-these texts seamlessly combine portraits of an interconnected and globalized world with narratives thatemphasize the agency of their subjects.

The Complete Works


Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
    The real identity of the person who chose to write under the pseudonym of Dionysius the Areopagite is unknown. Even the exact dates of his writings have never been determined. Moreover the texts themselves, though relatively short, are at points seemingly impenetrable and have mystified readers over the centuries. Yet the influence of this shadowy figure on broad range of mystical writers from the early middle ages on is readily discernible. His formulation of a method of negative theology that stresses the impotence of humans' attempt to penetrate the "cloud of unknowing" is famous as is his meditation on the divine names.Despite his influence, relatively few attempts have been made to translate the entire corpus of his written into English. Here in one volume are collected all of the Pseudo-Dionysius' works. Each has been translated from the Migne edition, with reference to the forthcoming Göttingen critical edition of A.M. Ritter, G. Heil, and B. Suchla.To present these works to the English-speaking public, an outstanding team of six research scholars has been assembled. The lucid translation of Colm Luibheid has been augmented by Paul Rorem's notes and textual collaboration. The reader is presented a rich and varied examination of the main themes of Dionysian spirituality by René Roques, an incisive discussion of the original questions of the authenticity and alleged heresies in the Dionysian corpus by Jaroslav Pelikan, a comprehensive tracing Dionysius' influence on medieval authors by Jean Leclercq, and a survey by Karlfried Froehlich of the reception given the corpus by Humanists and sixteenth-century Reformers.

Man and His Symbols


C.G. Jung - 1964
    The great psychologist dreamed that his work was understood by a wide public, rather than just by psychiatrists, and therefore he agreed to write and edit this fascinating book. Here, Jung examines the full world of the unconscious, whose language he believed to be the symbols constantly revealed in dreams. Convinced that dreams offer practical advice, sent from the unconscious to the conscious self, Jung felt that self-understanding would lead to a full and productive life. Thus, the reader will gain new insights into himself from this thoughtful volume, which also illustrates symbols throughout history. Completed just before his death by Jung and his associates, it is clearly addressed to the general reader.